I think laws often provide an illusion of fairness which can really only be enacted by those who seek it in their hearts. Unfortunately for us, the rule of money, the market, and law have so far invaded the rule of our consciences that we must all act with complicity in modern economic injustices, or one will be punished. As a Christian, I interpret God's form of fairness and justice as one of mercy and grace. The Golden Rule and Jesus' reminder to not judge lest we be judged are my personal favorite when considering the application of force or violence for the greater good.
I have given a lot of thought to applying grace economically through social agreements because I believe a merciful society requires a systematic approach of protecting our rights to access the available means of our survival as well as a fair title to the fruits our labors. The Old Testament describes such merciful justice with the law requiring that the fields (held in common) be harvested in a circle by the sower of the square lot and that the sower not reap that which had fallen to the ground. I see this as a geometric minimum proposed to economically ensure sharing with the destitute. I would like to see us apply this principled simplicity to providing shelter, food, and clean water to those who do not have the means to sustain themselves. There is no hope for a merciful justice if we don't help the needy freely.
After reading works of Henry George and Silvio Gesell, that is the sort of fairness in distribution I would like to see applied the modern rents reaped from the titles to God's collective gift of Nature, our Land.
But, alas, as a consequence of our lust for a royal class, I believe we have purchased our modern laws with a political scheming that enacts a pernicious form of "justice" through the machinery of the State.
My critique of Capitalism is that its proponents continually respect artificial rights to exploitation. Initially, Capitalism's proponents taught us to respect the rights of slaveholders, the right of man over another man. It still teaches us to respect private titles to our land and other natural resources that the title holder did not produce, but captured. Finders keepers results in brutish injustice and monopoly. Capitalism also demands we respect usury in debts that carry interest in the lending of money. For instance, our Federal income taxes first and foremost pay the interest on our Nation-State's debts. With modern fiat currencies, interest is a fee accepted by persons for the ability to acquire money by an acceptance of debt. Mechanically, modern money is nothing more than a fancy IOU. I think rents on land tenure (not rents that pay for the consumption and maintenance of an improvement on said land) are economically similar to the interest paid on debts resulting from liens on capital (like a mortgage on house).
Due to the effort required maintaining and improving capital on that Land (like building and maintaining houses, tilling fields and returning to them the proper nutrients), I think returns from the purchase of those improvements should belong to those who conquer entropy and produce them with their labors. I believe it is fair that they reap the greater product that results from the mixture of their labor with the land.
The produce of labor resulting from the mixture of it with our natural resources is the bedrock of human communities. Cooperative action is the greatest catalyst we use in that production and it is responsible for the vast variety and quanitity of today's consumable goods and capital wealth. But the labor expended in the first occupation of Land, is, to me, a poor justification for perpetual title to an economic rent on its future occupation. I think that, if an economic rent is collected at all, it should be distributed alloidally to each citizen of the municipality who uses the land that they live on, not private persons with a logically flimsy title.
Enacting this sense of fairness is a way to ensure a wealthy man who occupies a giant piece of land will pay a larger rent to the community, unlike in the modern Capitalist State, where he is likely to maintain that house (and more) with an income collected renting the right to occupy the land he privately owns in the community. I want to reiterate though that the income from the sale of the products of labor "mixed" with the land is the natural wage of the laborer. I do, however, see a potential application of our the past geometric minimum to this income.
I also believe it is the labororer's duty to maintain the Land, restoring it when necessitated by the consequences of his labors extractions. If the cost of remuneration does not come out of the market yield of the products whose production caused it, our economy will never be environmentally sustainable. The communal title to Land would still provide a market place for the exchange of goods and services to meet our needs and wants in the production of consumable goods and capital for amplifying the wealth created in future production. It would however replace the profits of an rentier class with a communal responsibility to take the best care possible of the places and people that make our Land our home.
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